The correspondences are a set of symbols, associations and qualities which provide a handle on the elusive something a sephira represents. Some of the correspondences are hundreds of years old, many were concocted this century, and some are my own; some fit very well, and some are obscure – oddly enough it is often the most obscure and ill-fitting correspondence which is most productive; like a Zen riddle it perplexes and annoys the mind until it arrives at the right place more in spite of the correspondence than because of it.

There are few canonical correspondences; some of the sephiroth have alternative names, some of the names have alternative translations, the mapping from Hebrew spellings to the English alphabet varies from one author to the next, and inaccuracies and accretions are handed down like the family silver. I keep my Hebrew dictionary to hand but guarantee none of the English spellings.

The correspondences I have given are as follows:

The Meaning is a translation of the Hebrew name of the sephira.

The Planet in most cases is the planet associated with the sephira. In some cases it is not a planet at all (e.g. the fixed stars). The planets are ordered by decreasing apparent motion – this is one correspondence which appears to pre-date Copernicus!

The Element is the physical element (earth, water, air, fire, aethyr) which has most in common with the nature of the Sephira. The Golden Dawn applied an excess of logic to these attributions and made a mess of them, to the confusion of many. Only the five Lower Face sephiroth have been attributed an element.

Briatic colour. This is the colour of the sephira as seen in the world of Creation, Briah. There are colour scales for the other three worlds but I haven’t found them to be useful in practical work.

Magical Image. Useful in meditations; some are astute.

The Briatic Correspondence is an abstract quality which says something about the essence of the way the sephira expresses itself.

The Illusion characterizes the way in which the energy of the sephira clouds one’s judgement; it is something which is *obviously* true. Most people suffer from one or more of these according to their temperament.

The Obligation is a personal quality which is demanded of an initiate at this level.

The Virtue and Vice are the energy of the sephiroth as it manifests in a positive and negative sense in the personality.

Qlippoth is a word which means “shell”. In medieval Kabbalah each sephira was “seen” to be adding form to the sephira which preceded it in the Lightning Flash (see Chapter 3.). Form was seen to an accretion, a shell around the pure divine energy of the Godhead, and each layer or shell hid the divine radiance a little bit more, until God was buried in form and exiled in matter, the end-point of the process. At the time attitudes to matter were tainted with the Manichean notion that matter was evil, a snare for the spirit, and consequently the Qlippoth or shells were “demonized” and actually turned into demons. The correspondence I have given here restores the original notion of a shell of form *without* the corresponding force to activate it; it is the lifeless, empty husk of a sephira devoid of force, and while it isn’t a literal demon, it is hardly a bundle of laughs when you come across it.

The Command refers to the Four Powers of the Sphinx, with an extra one added for good measure.

The Spiritual Experience is just that.

The Titles are a collection of alternative names for the sephira; most are very old.

The God Name is a key to invoking the power of the sephira in the world of emanation, Atziluth.

The Archangel mediates the energy of the sephira in the world of creation, Briah.

The Angel Order administers the energy of the sephira in the world of formation, Yetzirah.

The Keywords are a collection of phrases which summarise key aspects of the sephira.

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